Author: bridgetholmes

Bridget Bowers Holmes is a career services professional having dedicated 12+ years to assisting students and alumni in reaching their career goals. Bridget’s career began as a Career Counselor at Villanova University where she then became an Assistant Director. Bridget left Villanova in 2006 to head back to her hometown, and has since served as the Director for Alumni Career Services and, most recently, Senior Director of Career Initiatives at Georgetown University. Under her leadership, the Alumni Career Services team has grown from serving 300 alumni a year in FY06 to more than 18,0000 in FY13. This unprecedented growth is due to her approach in both utilizing one on one resources to meet individualized needs as well as technology to leverage expertise for large number of alums. Bridget has a BA from Lehigh University, a MSEd in Psychological Services from University of Pennsylvania and is an EdD candidate at Widener University. She lives in Maryland with her husband, 8 month old son, and 3 year old daughter.

Georgetown had a distinctive presences at SXSW this year! Whitney Pezza, Associate Director of Alumni Career Services moved her office to Austin that week and met a ton of Hoyas along the way. Here are a few highlights.

On Wednesday evening (3/5), Provost Robert Groves, CIO Lisa Davis, and Vice Provost Randall Bass met with alumni at Hoya-owned restaurant La Condesa in downtown Austin to share some remarks from their panel earlier in the day on Designing the Future(s) of the University.

On Friday afternoon, alumni met with Randy Bass at the first ever co-working space in Austin, Conjunctured, to participate in a Design Lab, an exercise in unbundling higher education and taking a close look into where education ends and begins. For example, does it start in high school and you can take credits towards your degree so in 4 years on campus you wind up with a BA/MA? Or is it less traditional? There was also discussion about alumni life-long learners, and integrating more technology into the classroom and using it so we can see where a student’s mastery is and isn’t.

On Saturday, alumni met at Little Woodrow’s on 6th Street to hang out and watch the Hoyas play against Villanova, which was a welcome respite against the rain and constant action happening at SXSW.

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First, I must give credit where credit is due. Joe Scafidi (B’95) casually mentioned the concept of “collecting no’s” when I ran into him an a Hoya networking event. I was immediately and enthusiastically intrigued. In fact, I think I might have scared him with how I reacted to this little exercise. It’s brilliant on so many levels. It’s a short experiment in human nature and social behavior, but one that has daily implications.

The concept is this: ask people for things. See what they say. And you’ll probably be surprised how often the answer is yes. Ask a stranger for an umbrella. A professor for an extension on a deadline. Ask your boss to leave early. Ask someone for career advice. The only rules are you can’t ask the same person twice and each ask must be different. What you typically learn is that very rarely is the answer no and that everything can be a negotiation. The question is, how many asks do you need to make in order to get 10 no’s? Probably more than you think.

Here’s what we learned:

Just ask. Someone once told me that FEAR stands for “False Expectations About Risk.” Many times we assume the answer is no before we even ask so we don’t even bother.

We all want to be liked. Human nature general seeks to please (or at least makes us feel like it’s socially unacceptable to say no). This works in your favor when you are the one asking, but also provides lessons for those of us who can’t say no to the barrage of requests that abound daily. The fact is, it’s often easier for people to say yes than to risk conflict and if the ask is in the future it’s easy to say yes in the present.

It’s all about the negotiation. Things are rarely as black and white as “yes” and “no.” How do you get to the place of “yes” by understanding the needs and wants of the other party? If you’re really negotiating there isn’t a “winner” or “loser,” you both walk away happy.

It’s all in how you ask. How can you ask in a way that makes it even tougher to say no?

And some implications:

The good news: When it comes to career networking and reaching out to acquaintances and strangers for advice, this is great news. People will probably say yes more often than they say no. If there is a mutual connection (friend, alma mater, etc.) I would venture to guess that this increases the likelihood of yes.

The bad news: When it comes to our own time management and work/life balance this tendency toward yes works against us. We over commit and wonder why we are stressed and exhausted.

Let us know how your “collecting no’s” goes! Tweet us at #GUCollectNos

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In our blog post a few weeks ago, I talked about the book I’m reading, The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work by Scott Berkun. I’m a few chapters in and it’s already a really interesting read about company culture, how we work, and how we think about our work. Here’s what I’ve found particularly fascinating so far…

Customer Service: The Happiness Team

WordPress.com calls their customer support team “Happiness” and it’s employees “Happiness engineers.” The author admits that he began working for the company he was suspicious: can you change the reality of an onerous job and often overlooked team by changing a name? All employees begin their tenure at WordPress with a few day stint in customer support (i.e. Happiness Team). It puts employees on the front line, responding to customers, and learning the intricacies of their company.

The Happiness Team analyzed not only the types of problems coming in to them, but data around ticket numbers, response time and the experience of the customer when they submitted a ticket. They strategically changed the process by which customers submit issues so that it sets a tone of responsiveness as opposed to interrogation. They ask each customer, “What did you do?” “What did you see?” and “What did you expect?” in order to gather the most information. This thoughtful approach to the process and content of customer service, beyond just providing “good” customer service in terms of response time and problem solving, was very interesting.

They also analyze the success of new employees in the support role as data showed that it was an indicator of future performance.

The performance dashboard of each support team employee can be seen by all others, instilling a sense of healthy competition, importance, and accountability.

Management Trends: Fads Must Fit

“Every year new trends in work become popular in spite of their futility for most organizations that try them. These trends are often touted as revolutions and frequently are identified with a high-profile company of the day. Concepts like casual Fridays, brainstorming sessions, Lean, Six Sigma, Agile, matrixed organizations, or event 20% time (Google’s policy of supporting pet projects) are management ideas that become popular in huge waves, heralded as silver bullets for workplaces. The promise of a trend is grand, but the result never is. Rarely do the consultants championing, and profiting from, these ideas disclose how superficial the results will be unless their places in a culture healthy enough to support them” (p. 29). Read: We all can’t recreate the Google headquarters, nor should we.

It’s easier to utilize the latest trend in company culture than to honestly examine and attempt to change company culture.

In the case of WordPress, it was founded based on the principle of open source programming to “democratize publishing.” As a growing start up, this tended to attract like-minded individuals with shared values. Their philosophy eventually distilled down to Transparency, Meritocracy, and Longevity.

“Talent is hard to find, especially at new organizations, which allows leaders to justify rushing to hire people who are selfish, arrogant, or combative” (p. 36). Hiring for immediate needs creates problems in the future.

Even their employment offer letters are non-traditional examples of the culture, values, and ideals of the company. They come across as more of an inspirational mantra or manifesto than an offer of employment.

These are just a few tidbits… stay tuned for more blog posts as I read on. I haven’t even covered HOW employees at WordPress do their work yet (only 1% of their work is via email)!

Questions that have arisen for me as I read have been: How do you change a negative company culture? How do you hire for culture? How do you know which management trends (read: fads) will work for your company/organization? What is the role of team culture vs. company culture?

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The elevator pitch. Your matchbox statement. Your tagline. Your brand.
When I think of these I think of something rehearsed and awkward sounding. Like a kid playing grown up. Like creating a headline for an online dating site. Gimicky. Salesy.

An elevator speech doesn’t have to be a series of contrived, memorized sentences. If you do some thinking in advance about your personal brand and professional experiences it may not feel so awkward. An elevator pitch is rarely one sided – it’s part of a conversation – so don’t make it feel like a monologue.

Here are some tips to consider:

1. Keep your audience in mind. Are you talking to an investor? Fellow alum? Potential employer? Friend of a friend? Your company CEO? This will not only change the content but the tone of your elevator pitch… from formal to friendly, from focused to familiar.

2. It will change over time. While you may have your standard elevator pitch in mind, also spice it up with some recent highlights or developments (and some of those developments may be episodic or over time). Did you just surpass a goal? Host a recent event? Attend a conference? Complete an educational endeavor? Travel for professional purposes? Has your company grown significantly in the past 18-24 months?

3. Have a few different versions. This goes back a bit to #1. If you run into your boss or boss’s boss in the elevator your elevator speech is probably going to be more about some recent happenings in your area. In this case you may want to mention some of the headlines in your work as of late. Did you just launch a new program or product? Did your team just pass a significant milestone?

4. What makes you/your work/your company unique? How do you stand out from the competition? What is the compilation of key attributes that make you different from people in a similar role or with a similar background?

5. Be interesting. In other words, if someone says “what’s new?” have an answer. What’s the most exciting part of your work? What is your proudest accomplishment? What project have you been working on most recently? Sometimes your personal and professional brands collide. In a networking environment, preliminary talk often lead to conversations about what connects us – hobbies, interests, activities. Those are just as much a part of your personal brand.

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One downside to virtual career fairs is the lack of fun company stressballs, pens, and mints. Fortunately, there’s an upside: you can wear your PJ’s.

Last week we posted that we are hosting a virtual career fair for GU alums interested in connecting with startups and small businesses. According to Market Research Media, the virtual conference and trade show market more than doubled between 2009 and 2011 (pmi.org). Virtual events are expected to be a US$18.6 billion industry by 2018 – and many of those will be virtual job fairs.

Getting the most out of a virtual career fair requires more than just logging in so here are some tips:

2. Research. Research the companies in advance as you would for any career fair. Since virtual career fairs provide connections through online chats, you don’t want to waste precious time gathering company information and details that you can find out in advance. Bypass the general and move directly into the meat of the conversation. Also research the platform and format of the virtual event you will be attending.

3. Upload your information early. You want to make sure everything goes smoothly, things are formatted properly, and that your information is available to employers if they take a peek at attendee information before the fair.

4. No hashtags. Since the connections are made through online chatting, it can be tempting, or even habit, to use emoticons or instant messenger lingo – DON’T. While you may be a wizard at using clever hashtags on Twitter, save those for the twitterverse. #needajob #loveyourcompany #hireme

5. Follow Up. Remember the name of the person you chatted with so you can google them later. Just like any career fair or job interview, show your interest, enthusiasm, tenacity, and gratitude by following up with the company/employer/recruiter with a note. Attach your resume so the recruiter doesn’t have to search for it.

6. Have an updated and completed LinkedIn profile. It’s the next logical step in investigating candidates during or after the fair. Also make sure your overall presence on social media including Facebook and Twitter is appropriate.

Some say that while you can do a Virtual Career Fair in your PJ’s and slippers, you should still dress up in order to bring out your most professional self. I personally, think I would still opt for the comfort of PJ’s. But that’s just me.

Have you participated in a virtual career fair and have some tips? We want to hear!

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Evernote – We’re still exploring this newly discovered app. It allows you to create to-do lists, capture ideas, store meeting notes, store photos and then sync them and find them anywhere – tablet, phone, or computer – via a powerful search tool that even searches words in photos. You can store documents, design and manage projects and more. The supplementary app “Skitch” allows you to mark up documents with annotations and symbols. Seems a bit complicated to get started but could be worth the time. Free.

Georgetown Mobile App – The Alumni portion of the app has it’s very own careers section which includes a job search tip of the week, alumni job postings, and a schedule of upcoming webinars. Make sure you select the “Alumni” homescreen at the bottom of the app to access. Free.

GoToWebinar – Our favorite thing about the gotowebinar app is that you can now view our award winning professional development webinars from your phone or tablet! From the hilltop to your desktop… and now your phone… or tablet. Free.

GlassDoor – We like this easy to use app to search for jobs, salary information, or companies in geographic regions. The app is sleek and intuitive. Filter your searches easily, flag the jobs you are interested in and email job descriptions to yourself or friends. Free.

Studio – Studio is doing for graphic design what Instagram did for photography. We use this for work but it’s also fun for home! Import pictures, add text, graphics, and overlays, and you have a powerful image to convey your message. Free.

Easilydo – If you have trouble keeping up with all of your emails and social media accounts this app may be for you. Easilydo aggregates your email, contacts and social media account information to pull out the things that can make you more efficient. You can schedule happy birthday messages to friends on Facebook, congratulate colleagues on promotions through Linked In, in addition to tracking packages, get directions to your next meeting, add contacts to you address book automatically, have your boarding passes and travel documents handy, and more.

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New York Times bestseller and award winning journalist Ashley Merryman (L’98) came back to the Hilltop this week to speak to a group of 100 alums about her new book Top Dog: The Science of Winning & Losing. After presenting a webinar for us in the spring on the topic, we found that many (many!) of the questions that came in were about gender differences in competition so her talk specifically focused on this aspect of her book. What was an hour lecture could have continued for two or three more.

Ashley’s books (co-written with Po Bronson) take a scientific journalistic approach – Ashley and Po research, read, assimilate, attend conferences, interview experts, and examine data for months in order to live and breathe a topic. The outcome is what I think of as a research-based compilation of everything interesting and important about a particular topic (in this case, competition). They take the scientific research hiding from the general public in journals and ivory towers and make it accessible, relatable, and actionable. [Their first book, Nurtureshock, focused on children’s development and parenting.]

What we thought was going to be a conversation mostly about competition between and among men and women in the workplace really became a conversation about gender differences in all aspects of life; it’s difficult to extricate work from home, personal from professional. And you definitely can’t look at adult competition without examining it’s childhood roots. As a woman, a working professional, a mom, and specifically the mom of a daughter, I found the conversation to be intensely personal.

Here are some of my take-aways:

Women compete – they just compete differently – “they choose competitors differently, they don’t have the same timing in their attacks and withdrawals, they differ in whether they play to win or play not to lose.. and they judge risk differently, even more so under stress” (p. 92).

Girls grow up playing in pairs; boys in groups. Interesting foundation for competition.

The real benefit of competition is improved performance, not winning. This is one reason Ashley advocates for children’s programs not giving every child a trophy.

Only 4 women ran for Governor in 2010 – Women will run for political office when the odds of winning are decent by not a long shot.

Similarly, women tend to apply for jobs when they have all of the requisite skills, men when they have some.

Among start-up employees, women are outnumbered by men 2 to 1; Women tend to look at the odds of success as opposed to their male counterparts.

We’ve been hearing about “leaning in” lately… Its the buzz-phrase of the day. Some people love it, some people hate it. But regardless, Cheryl Sandberg should definitely have a copy of Top Dog on her nightstand.